The enchanted wine at Auerbach’s Cellar

The enchanted wine at Auerbach’s Cellar turns a tavern trick into a compact demonstration of how readily desire can be mistaken for evidence. Mephistopheles appears to produce the drink the revellers want from holes bored in their table, but the marvel becomes a test of their credulity: when wine spills and flames appear, they turn on him, and he answers with an illusion that confounds their senses. He disappears with Faust, leaving the company to reconstruct what happened from the evidence of their own astonishment.

The Desired Wine and the Apparent Miracle

The trick begins with a practical request. Mephistopheles calls for a gimlet, then bores a hole in the edge of the table where Frosch sits. After asking for wax to make stoppers, he works at the table while the drinkers discuss which wine they want. Their preferences supply the terms of the spectacle: the expected wine is not an incidental detail but the bait that makes the conjuring seem responsive to them.

Once the holes have been bored and plugged, Mephistopheles performs a brief incantation that joins images of grapes, vines, and wood, then tells the company to draw the stoppers and drink. As they do so, the wine they have desired flows into each glass. The sequence makes an ordinary piece of furniture appear to answer appetite with abundance. Mephistopheles presents the result as a miracle, but the theatrical setup—the hidden preparation, the stopped holes, and the precise fit between request and apparent fulfilment—makes the marvel a demonstration of manipulation rather than proof of supernatural benevolence.

From Delight to Alarm

The company’s pleasure does not last. Siebel drinks carelessly, spills wine upon the earth, and sees it turn to flame. He calls for help and identifies the fire as infernal; the revellers’ response converts a convivial game into a perceived danger. Their reaction shows how quickly the same scene can change meaning: what had seemed a convenient gift becomes evidence of hostile magic once the drink behaves unexpectedly.

Siebel calls the act magic and urges the others to strike Mephistopheles. They draw their knives and rush at him. The response is a direct consequence of their fear, but it also shows how fully the illusion has governed their interpretation: they accept the appearance of the wine and flame as grounds for immediate action, without understanding what has been staged. Mephistopheles counters not by explaining the trick but by performing another one.

Confusion, Recognition, and Departure

With solemn gestures, Mephistopheles speaks of false word and form of air changing place and ensnaring the senses. The attackers stand amazed and look at one another. The confrontation has been displaced into confusion: those who meant to attack him can no longer rely on a stable account of what they see. Mephistopheles then points their attention toward a vine and its hanging grapes, taking Siebel by the nose as the others do the same reciprocally while raising their knives. His final command calls for error to be released from their eyes, as if recognition were itself part of the spectacle he controls.

Mephistopheles disappears with Faust, and the revellers start apart. In the aftermath, Altmayer says he saw Mephistopheles riding a wine-cask out of the cellar door; the fright, he adds, still weighs on his feet. Turning back toward the table, he wonders whether the source of wine might still be running. Siebel supplies the episode’s blunt conclusion: it was all deceit and lying. Their judgments register the remains of the trick from different angles—Altmayer recounts an extraordinary sight, while Siebel names the deception—but neither can undo the experience that made the illusion seem real.

The Episode’s Dramatic Work

The wine trick moves through a clear reversal: appetite is satisfied, apparent danger provokes aggression, and a second illusion turns aggression into bewilderment. Its comic force depends on the gap between what the revellers think they understand and what their own reactions reveal. They accept the wine when it accords with their wishes, then treat its sudden transformation as proof of danger; at no point do they command the scene as confidently as they believe they do.

The episode also establishes Mephistopheles as an entertainer who makes other people’s expectations serve his designs. He does not merely produce a marvel; he controls its preparation, its apparent fulfilment, and the confusion that follows. Faust leaves with him while the company remains among the table, the wine, and competing recollections of the exit. The trick thus concludes not with a settled explanation but with the revellers’ belated recognition that what seemed a miracle was deception.